Thousands march for abortion rights in US ahead of midterm elections

By Alejandra Arredondo

Washington, Oct 8 (EFE).- Thousands marched Saturday in this capital and in other cities across the United States in defense of abortion rights with one month to go before mid-term congressional elections.

Chanting slogans such as “Abortion is a human right” and “We wont back down,” some 3,000 people made their way through central Washington to the Capitol.

The Women’s March organization said that more than 450 events were planned nationwide as part of a “Women’s Wave” day of action in opposition to June’s Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal throughout the country.

For Jennifer Scales, the 46-year-old mother of two children now attending university, the issue is deeply personal.

Her voice breaking, she told EFE that her life would have turned out very differently if she had not been able to get the two abortions she had in her youth.

“It allowed me to have a life and offer something to my children,” she said. “It’s important that they have the same right to choose that I had.”

So far, 13 of the 50 US states have moved to limit – if not eliminate – access to reproductive rights for around one third of the country’s women.

President Joe Biden and the Democrats have made abortion rights a central theme of their campaign to hold onto their existing majorities in both houses of Congress.

Traditionally, the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections.

“The only good that can come out of that decision of the Supreme Court is that it motivates more people to vote,” lawyer Andrea Bridgman, 65, told EFE.

But Sam Goldman, who traveled to Washington from Philadelphia with 10 other pro-choice activists to take part in Saturday’s protest, said that “people have to face the fact that just voting will not stop this.”

She and her friends were seeking donations to a fund to aid women who find access to abortion barred.

“No right for the oppressed in this country has been won just by means of the vote,” Goldman said.

Abortion is now completely prohibited in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. EFE aaca/dr